Shake Appeal: OBN IIIs' Live in San Francisco

Shake Appeal is a column that highlights new garage and garage-adjacent releases. Next week, Castle Face are releasing the latest installment of their Live in San Francisco series. Evan Minsker discusses why every record in that series is (so far) an essential purchase.

Third Man Records puts out live records that are recorded there at the store in Nashville. Some of these have been truly great live albums—I'm a particularly big fan of the ones they've put out by Davila 666, Tyvek, and Human Eye.

So without throwing too much shade at that label—because, again, those are good records—Castle Face is absolutely crushing it with their Live in San Francisco series. They're great-sounding live records that are tightly curated and have gorgeous design. Live at Third Man, meanwhile, features artists ranging from Nobunny to Jack Johnson to Conan O'Brien. All of those records have their place, but the artists are disparate and the records are filed into the same black sleeves.

OBN IIIs

Maybe it's an arbitrary argument to say that when something's more fun to hold and look at, it's a "better" product. But Castle Face has done something that's been lost to the streaming age—they make you want to study the photos (shot by Brian Pritchard) carefully. Organized in a grid on the back, they give you a good idea of the room, the band, the band's sweat level, the crowd, and the recording process. And for a black and white record package, the details make it feel sleek and expensive—the typography, that the inside of the sleeve is lined with black instead of white, that the paper sleeve on the inside has cut corners to give it more of a shape than the traditional square. It's little stuff, but it makes a world of difference when you hold it in your hands.

White Fence

The series is recorded by a dream team of West Coast producers: label boss and Thee Oh Sees frontman John Dwyer, Eric "King Riff" Bauer (who produced most of Ty Segall's LPs), Chris Woodhouse (who recorded and mixed most of the recent Oh Sees records, plus Ty Segall Band's Slaughterhouse), and Bob Marshall. They post up in venues around San Francisco with a Tascam 388 (Pitchfork's Aaron Leitko wrote a great feature detailing that machine's importance), and together, they make live LPs that sound really good.

Thus far, the records in this series have served an important purpose: They offered remarkably solid live records by bands who hadn't released live records. The first one in the series was a live White Fence LP—a hugely important release considering all of Tim Presley's White Fence records to date were psychedelic, home-recorded affairs. The other was a Fuzz EP, four songs recorded on Ty Segall's birthday that perfectly captured the band's incredible live show. (Added perk for that one: pictures of John Dwyer handing Ty a birthday cake while he drummed.)

The latest Live in San Francisco 12" features a set from OBN IIIs, the Austin-based outfit whose latest album Third Time to Harm is candidate for "Shake Appeal album of the summer" (a thing I just made up). This was an October 10, 2013 performance at the Chapel, where they opened for Thee Oh Sees and the Blind Shake. On their records, they're purveyors of bashing, kickass rock'n'roll on that LP. This 12" does them justice, capturing their thrilling, all-power live set. In addition to capturing their searing guitar solos and ramshackle drive. They close with "No Time for the Blues" in a performance that rips so hard, you'll want to pick up the needle and hear it again. And again.

Fuzz

And these records capture the spontaneous energy of a live show. After the first track, Orville Bateman Neeley III, wide-eyed, screams, "Everybody thank Kyle!" Later, mid-song, you hear him interrupt a verse to say, "Watch out for her, man." The best moment, though, comes during "If the Shit Fits", where he starts lashing out at the audience for their wardrobe, particularly a guy in a cologne-covered v-neck. "There are a bunch of people who look like shit here tonight," he says, straight-faced. "You should be ashamed of yourselves. Especially you up in the balcony afraid to show yourselves. I'll bet you all look like shit!" For a brief moment, while you hold the sleeve and stare at the pictures, you feel like the shitty-looking person in the balcony!

These are not records that you download and listen to on laptop speakers. You buy them, you put them on the hi-fi, you listen to them really loud, and you sit on the floor and stare at all the pictures. Go buy all of the Live in San Francisco LPs and then write letters to Castle Face telling them to make more of these. Because they're awesome.